


The Hand that Holds the Crowned Heart

by Fritillary



Category: Pet Shop of Horrors
Genre: Ancient China, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Minor Canonical Character(s), References to Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 17:10:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18695791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fritillary/pseuds/Fritillary
Summary: The heart of the Empress Dou, formerly Lady Xiaowen, is like snow.





	The Hand that Holds the Crowned Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers (?) for Volume 3, chapter 1 "Diamonde" of the Manga.  
> The names for the Emperor and Empress in Diamonde are not given in the manga, so I've stolen them from the Emperor and Empress of China (Liu Dynasty) in 180 BC. The words in _italics_ are taken from the translated Tokyopop manga. The minor characters rather ran away with the plot bunnies here....

I - Friendship

_I can still remember our wedding, how excited everyone was. I was so young. Too young, I think_

At nine years old, Xiaowen wasn’t really looking forward to 'doing her duty'. Particularly when that duty consisted of marriage to the boy-king of Garuna. The long journey over the mountains, rocking about in the sedan chair, had made her more tired than she ever thought she could be. She huddled in the crimson-dyed furs and thanked the screens provided by the similarly-coloured silk curtains that surrounded her box, each one shifting gently with the movement of the bearers' steps. The swaying slowed when they approached the capital, the pole-bearers having to avoid the stragglers from cheering crowds that lined the streets, anxious to welcome their new queen.

After passing through the gates to the emperor's palace, the chair seemed to hesitate for a minute before tentatively floating upwards as the bearers shifted the weight in order to climb the long low steps leading up to the doors. They reached the top and the sedan, along with it's precious child-cargo, was lowered gently to the ground for Xiaowen, soon to be the empress Dou, bride of Wen Heng, to come forth. Xiaowen gritted her teeth and swallowed the urge to shrink down among the furs again, to pretend that someone else was supposed to emerge from the silk-strewn lacquered box. But her attending ladies (all of whom were several years her senior) deftly pulled aside the curtains and Xiaowen summoned all her courage to step down onto the shining flagstones. Xiaowen paused as her tiny ornate slippers touched the ground, allowing the flying streamers tied to nearest corner of her box to waft in front, blinding her temporarily. 

She gulped and moved purposefully forwards as if she could see straight through the scarlet silk ribbons, only to stumble to a halt as the silks moved to reveal several old men in ornately-embroidered robes, arranged like game-pieces out along the platform before the ten-men-high doors. Standing a little apart from the advisors was a boy no older than Xiaowen herself; her husband-to-be, in sunbright-yellow robes. He continued to scowl as Xiaowen shuffled nervously towards him, careful not to tread on the trailing ties of her robe. His first words, accent swimming in arrogance and pride, were as welcoming as his expression. His lady's response, muttered from behind her lace fan, was likewise.

_"You're my bride? You're not very pretty."  
"Well, you're pretty short for a king."_

_Our first conversation turned into our first fight. It wouldn’t be the last._

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II - Loyalty

_We spent our days as actors, playing the roles of king and queen, husband and wife, while we spent our nights in the arms of others._

No-one could quite distinguish when the Count D first arrived. One day he was just there and Xiaowen, now the Empress Dou, suddenly felt as if he has always been there or perhaps that she had simply been waiting for him to be there. It was not as if her husband cared whether the woman he took to his chambers at night was his wife or not, or indeed cared whom his wife chose to let enter her own rooms after her ladies had retired to bed. So she allowed herself the lease of liberty that appeared the right of an empress, and the love of the young, mystical Count among the peonies that filled palace gardens in a blushing carpet.

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III - Love

_Then, one day I fell ill. For a week, I was fluttering between life and death. When at last I came to, I found my husband watching over me._

Opening her eyes, Dou dizzily watched as her vision cleared; the shapes and shadows brightening to form, not the expected anxious faces of her ladies in waiting, but the frown-creased brow of her husband. Wen's eyes held an expression of such compassion, such concern, that in that instant Dou's heart seemed to stop. She had not believed that her cold, arrogant husband felt any emotional ties to the woman he had been bound to in marriage for nearly ten years, and yet the relief in his eyes at her return to life was clear. 

Time itself appeared to slow as the empress reached out a thin hand, still shaking in its weakened state, to stroke his careworn forehead, but before she could touch him, Wen lifted his hands and clasped her fingers tightly between his own. The years of marital distaste, wrought with petty squabbles and staunch antipathy, simply faded away as her strength returned; faded like snow on the first day of spring.


End file.
